In the old days, lawyers had a Dictaphone or some such device, complete with a little hand-held microphone, for dictation. They’d sit at their mahogany desks and ramble into a recorder, then pass the tape to their “girl” (yes, that’s what they were called back then – haven’t you ever watched “Man Men”?). The lawyer would promptly retire to the gentleman’s club for a martini or six, then golf the rest of the day.

Later on, we got hip to technology. Lawyers tossed out the Dictaphones (and started getting sued for chasing their secretaries around desks – rightfully so, I might add) and began using mini-cassette recorders for their dictation. Then it was an electronic recorder with a USB hook-up for their computer.

Now we’ve got something better. An iPhone and a freebie app from the folks who brought us Dragon Dictate.

Nuance Dragon Dictation for iPhone lets you tap the little Record button, start talking, and then tap when you’re finished. The app turns your words into text that you can use for an e-mail, a text message, or the contents of your iPhone’s clipboard.

Make a mistake? No worries, just tap the error to bring up a list of suggestions. Only bad part? You can’t use it offline.

Equally amazing: Dragon Dictation is free, at least for now.

Here’s a video. If you’ve got an iPhone, go grab this app before they start charging big money for it.

Photo courtesy of rpujols.